Renegade's Magic (The Soldier Son Trilogy #3)

He paused and drew breath, then glanced at Kesey. “Trooper, do you have any water? My throat is as dry as the road.”

Kesey shook his head. “Only in the cabin where your missus is. Unless you want to walk back to the spring. Or I could go fetch you some.” He glanced down at the bucket in his hand.

“Would you? I’d appreciate it.”

Kesey hurried off with his bucket. Spink and I walked the rest of the way up the hill. There was water in the animal trough, and he let his horse have some. We walked over to the cart and he sat down on the tail of it.

“So what happened?” I demanded impatiently.

Spink shook his head in disgust. “Thayer decided to flog all three of them, the woman as well as the two men. He gave us a long lecture about how we had failed as officers if our men could behave in such a beastly fashion. Thayer has been…strange since that night, the night you left town. And recently he’s become even stranger. From hints he has dropped, in his lectures and his Sixday sermons, I think he knows now that Carsina lied to him, that really you had been her fiancé. I think it is devouring him, from the inside. In his own mind, he’d made a saint out of Carsina. He justified everything about that night on the basis of her innocence. And when he found out she had deceived him and lied about you, I think it swung him in a different direction. The man hates to look at me now. When I report to him, he stares at the wall. He’s so full of guilt about what he did that he now tries to be perfect every moment.

“I wouldn’t talk like this about a fellow officer in front of Kesey, but I just don’t think the Captain is right in his mind anymore. I think it is why he was left behind here with the rest of the dregs. At one time, he could have been a good officer, but now.” Spink shook his head. “At a time when the fear and despair that once overwhelmed us are gone, he seems intent on crushing the spirit out of the men. He has been organized. I’ll give him that. The few men that are left, he drives. The maintenance of the fort and buildings are far better than they were, yet such tasks feel like busywork to the men. They mutter that there is little reason to rebuild barracks that will remain empty, or repair streets that carry hardly any traffic. He gives them no praise or pride in doing their work, only lectures on how it is a soldier’s duty to obey and not question.”

I broke into his long explanation with a question. “The dregs? What do you mean, the dregs left behind?”

He gave a small sigh. “Anyone with any connections left here with the rest of the regiment when they rode out. They left behind, well, the undesirable elements. The men who were lazy, troublesome, or stupid. The ones in poor health. The old soldiers. The scouts because they know this area, and everyone knows you can’t really bring a scout back to civilization. The officers who don’t behave like officers.”

He halted, folded his lips. My eyes searched his as I asked the horrible question. “Why you, then?”

He gave the tiniest of shrugs and then admitted, “Epiny’s forthrightness does not always endear her to people. Some find it irritating. Some officers feel it reflects badly on a lieutenant if he cannot or will not control his wife. Colonel Haren used to refer to her as a thorn in his flesh, more than once, when we were speaking. More often, he simply didn’t speak to me any more than he could help it.”

“Oh, good god, Spink. That’s so unfair.”

A smile twisted his mouth. “It is what it is. I married her because she was what I wanted with all my heart. I’m in this regiment because it was what was offered to me. I don’t confuse the one kind of commitment with the other. But”—and he sighed more deeply—“I know that Captain Thayer finds her behavior reprehensible. He has spoken to me privately about her twice now.”

“He’d never have survived being married to Carsina for long, then—” I stopped, wondering if I profaned the dead.

But Spink barked a short laugh. “From what little I knew of her, you are right. If she had lived, he’d be a different man. Good god, we all would, wouldn’t we? But she didn’t. And here we are. Her death and her deception of him have soured the man.

“He denies himself anything that might be remotely sinful or even pleasurable. Well, that’s his own business, but now he’s taken it beyond himself, trying to restrict the men and telling the officers how we ought to live to provide a ‘good example’ to the troops. Driving the whores out of town was extreme enough, but now he’s suggesting things like unaccompanied women should stay off the streets in the evenings and on Sixday. He wants to make attendance at the Sixday services mandatory for everyone who lives inside the fort, and to forbid the troops from going to the town businesses on Sixday.”